In my case, I already have my Mac Photos Library on an external hard drive. I want to transfer them to my Amazon cloud (b/c it’s free and since that’s free I’d rather not pay more for iCloud). Amazon cloud didn’t “accept” my PHOTOS library but it uploaded any pictures that were in my regular Pictures folder. To do this, hold the Option key and click the Photos icon in the dock to launch the app. This will bring up a new Choose Library window, with a list of libraries available for you to access.
Prepare your drive
Find out how to move your Photos library to another drive to save space on your Mac. Prepare your drive You can store your library on an external storage device, such as a USB or Thunderbolt drive formatted as APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journalled). When the external drive is attached, opening a library will display all of that library’s locations. In the correct dialog box, click the Include a folder button. Then select the external folder.
You can store your library on an external storage device, such as a USB or Thunderbolt drive formatted as APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journalled). However, you can't move your library to a disk that's used for Time Machine backups. Find out how to check the format of your external storage device.
To prevent data loss, Apple recommends not storing photo libraries on external storage devices, such as SD cards and USB flash drives, or drives that are shared on a network.
Move your Photos library to an external storage device
- Quit Photos.
- In the Finder, go to the external drive where you want to store your library.
- In another Finder window, find your library. The default location is Users > [username] > Pictures, and it's named Photos Library.
- Drag your library to its new location on the external drive. If you see an error, select your external drive's icon in the Finder, then choose File > Get Info. If the information under Sharing & Permissions isn't visible, click the triangle button , then make sure the 'Ignore ownership on this volume' tick box is selected. If it's not selected, click the lock button to unlock it, enter an administrator name and password, then select the tick box.*
- After the move has finished, double-click Photos Library in its new location to open it.
- If you use iCloud Photo Library, designate this library as the System Photo Library.
Delete original library to save space
After you've opened your library from its new location and made sure it's working as expected, you can delete the library from its original location.
In a Finder window, go back to your Pictures folder (or whichever folder you copied your library from) and move Photos Library to the bin. Then choose Finder > Empty Bin to delete the library and reclaim disk space.
Open another Photos library
If you have multiple libraries, here's how to open a different one:
- Quit Photos.
- Press and hold the Option key while you open Photos.
- Select the library you want to open, then click Choose Library.
Photos will use this library until you open a different one.
Learn more
If you encounter a permissions issue with your library, you may be able to resolve it by using the Photos library repair tool.
* If the volume isn't formatted APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journalled), or has been used for Time Machine backups but hasn't been erased, this tick box will either not be present, or won't be selectable after unlocking. Erase and reformat the drive for this option to be available.
How To Move Photos Library To External Drive
SSDs are essential for ensuring optimal performance on a Mac, but because they’re expensive, many people don’t have as much built-in storage space as they would like. If your Photos library has grown to the point where your SSD is nearly full, it might be time to think about offloading it to an external hard drive. (Don’t put it on a drive that you’re using as a Time Machine destination because there could be permissions conflicts, and note that Apple doesn’t recommend storing a Photos library on a drive shared over a network.)
Before we explain how to offload your photos, we want to mention another way of reducing the Photos footprint on your drive. If you’re using iCloud Photos (previously called iCloud Photo Library) to sync photos and videos between your devices, the originals are all stored in iCloud. In Photos > Preferences > iCloud, you can enable Optimize Mac Storage, which swaps the full-resolution images for smaller versions, saving a boatload of space. However, you may find Photos somewhat slower to use, as it has to download full-resolution versions of images you work with, and you won’t have a local backup of the original images. So it’s an option, but it has tradeoffs.
For most people with burgeoning Photos libraries, a better approach is to offload the entire library to an external hard drive. This approach comes with tradeoffs too; accessing images from a hard drive is slower than getting them from an internal SSD, and you have to figure out how you’re going to back up that drive as well. Plus, the drive has to be available, connected, and turned on (so you have to listen to it) for you to use Photos at all, which might be especially annoying if you regularly work remotely on a notebook Mac.
To move your Photos library to an external drive, follow these steps:
- If it’s running, quit Photos.
- In the Finder, drag Photos Library, which is stored in your Pictures folder by default, to the external drive. A few answers to common questions:
- Where on the external drive should I put it? It doesn’t matter, but we recommend putting it at the top level so you are less likely to lose track of it in the future.
- I got an error—what should I do? If you see an error telling you that you don’t have permission to copy to that drive, select the drive’s icon in the Finder and choose File > Get Info to open the Info window. If necessary click the triangle next to Sharing & Permissions, and make sure “Ignore ownership on this volume” is selected. If it’s not, click the lock icon, enter an administrator name and password, and select the checkbox.
- How long will it take to copy? Quite some time, depending on how many photos you have. It’s best to do overnight or when you don’t need to use Photos.
- When it’s done copying, double-click the new Photos Library icon on the external hard drive to launch Photos and set it to open that new copy on future launches.
- If you use iCloud Photos, designate this new library as the System Photo Library by choosing Photos > Preferences > General and clicking the “Use as System Photo Library” button.
- Scroll through your photo collection and make sure all your photos are present—double-click a few of them to spot check that the actual images open properly.
Obviously, your original Photos library is still taking up space on your SSD, but it’s best to use the new version for a little while before deleting the old one, just in case. When you’re ready to do that, drag it from the Pictures folder to the trash and choose Finder > Empty Trash to reclaim the space.
Move Photos Library To External Drive Mac
Social Media: Running out of space on your internal drive? You can clear a bunch of space by moving your Photos library to an external hard drive—here’s how: